Along with the recent rapid development of wireless communication, smart sensor nodes have been realized that require low power consumption, can be manufactured at low cost, and are small in size. These sensor nodes are used to measure a variety of ambient environment factors. With a plurality of sensor nodes, a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) having a self-organizing ability can be built without human support. Accordingly, even though a plurality of sensor nodes are dropped randomly from an aircraft or a helicopter and are then deployed, they can form a WSN with their wireless communication means.
Each sensor node of the WSN acquires sensing information through its sensor and transmits the sensing information to a core network through a sink node or a gateway. Therefore, the sensor nodes may find their applications in various fields such as disaster prevention systems and location-based services. The core network includes an infrastructure and a network that are specialized for a sensor network service as well as a backbone network or the Internet.
In general, a sensor node is identified by a pre-input fixed Identifier (ID) or an ID allocated by a Personal Area Network (PAN) coordinator. This simple, static identification method makes it difficult to distinguish services requested by respective user terminals and sensing information received from a large number of sensor nodes on the part of a core network having interfaces between user terminals or application servers and various sensor nodes. Moreover, if the number of sensor nodes increases rapidly, it is likely to provide wrong information in view of the same IDs. Considering diversification of sensor node terminal providers, service access authority may be limited. Thus, problems may arise in providing a service suitable for authority.
In terms of management and service control of sensor nodes and a sensor network formed with the sensor nodes, conventional sensor network technologies disclosed in the following non-patent documents simply provide environment monitoring through data sensing in a local environment. That is, the general sensor network control technologies do not have a configuration that provides services including mobility support of sensor nodes, registration and deregistration between various types of sensor nodes and a gateway, handover, mobility history management, tracking, etc. As a consequence, a general sensor network does not provide a location-based service and mobility support using indoor and outdoor location information. Further, the software framework of the sensor network does not have a real-time integrated framework including the sensor network.
Therefore, there exists a need for a method for controlling a backbone network in order to efficiently manage sensor nodes and provide an accurate, flexible sensor network service.